Birthday Cupcakes

I have made my fair share of birthday cupcakes and have tried a lot of different recipes, but after many years, I have finally settled on my go to “birthday cake” recipe. For the past few years, I have gone the cupcake route for birthdays simply because they are so much easier to deal with and so much easier to transport. I don’t have great luck with driving cakes from place to place so cupcakes make my life a lot easier. This recipe comes from one of my food blogger crushes, Smitten Kitchen. You can find the original recipe here. Her birthday cake recipe is simple enough, but it yields consistent, moist, not too sweet, yellow cupcakes every time. I don’t like for the cake of my cupcakes to be too sweet because I like for the sweetness to come from my generous dollop of super sweet frosting. I am a purist with my cakes and my cupcakes. No one really loves chocolate in my house so that’s out. And when it comes to yellow cake, moist and spongy reigns supreme. Too wet or too dry and you’ve lost me. This recipe uses cake flour, which has less protein and therefore less gluten, so it yields a lighter and more airy cake than all-purpose flour does. As always, I aim to use all organic ingredients for these so I feel good about feeding them to my kids and other people’s kids as well!

Makes 24 cupcakes

Ingredients

4 cups plus 2 Tbsp cake flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 sticks of unsalted butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

2 cups buttermilk

(By the way, I have “one and a half-ed” (for 36) and even doubled the recipe (for 48) and it still comes out perfectly.)

So pre-heat the oven to 350. Line 2 cupcake pans (for 24 cupcakes). Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and soda, and salt)

I love a fluffy bowl of flour

Next, beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy and light Add in vanilla and then add eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl as you go. With the mixer on low, beat in the buttermilk until just mixed. {as an aside, I never have buttermilk on hand so I always just make it with milk and vinegar. 1 Tbsp of white vinegar to 1 cup of milk does the trick. Let that sit for about 10 minutes and you have buttermilk!} Add the flour mixture in small batches until everything is just combined. Fill the cupcakes only about halfway because these do puff up quite a bit.

Ready for the oven

if you look closely, you can see teeny tiny specs of vanilla.

Bake for about 25 minutes until lightly golden and springy to the touch. Let cool on a wire rack before topping.

golden and puffy

fresh from the oven

I also have a few different icing/frosting recipes that I stick with, but lately I’m obsessed with this whipped cream/cream cheese icing. It’s really stable, pipes well, doesn’t melt when it’s out in room temperature (or in the Florida heat!) , and tastes amazing. It’s so easy too.

Ingredients

1 8 oz. stick of cream cheese, softened

2 cups of whipped cream

½ cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla

With the whisk attachment of a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla together until nice and smooth. Slowly add the heavy cream while mixing and beat until stiff peaks form . Scrape the sides of the bowl often and be careful not to over mix or you’ll end up with very buttery tasting frosting.

gorgeous consistency

perfect.

For his 5th birthday, my son wanted cherries on top of his cupcakes. Like most 5 year olds, he loves maraschino cherries, but I hate the gross dye and who knows what else that’s in them. I found these great natural cherries at Whole Foods. Not only do they look quite beautiful but they taste pretty much exactly like the fake stuff! You can’t beat that! I let mine drain on some paper towels for a while because I was afraid that the cherry juice would drip into the white frosting.

bada bing!

It worked great and the cherry juice stayed put. These birthday cupcakes were a huge hit with the 5 year old crowd and adults alike.

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As a native New Yorker living in sunny, southern California, I've been ingrained with a love for cooking and eating good food. I chronicle my adventures in (mostly) organic cooking and baking here, as I attempt to juggle it all and have fun along the way.